MPs urge action to undercut ‘manosphere’ by tackling anti-women ideology

OTTAWA – MPs are calling on the government to tackle the rise of antifeminist ideology by funding programs that undercut the “manosphere” of online influencers who blame women for men’s problems.

The House of Commons status of women committee tabled a report Tuesday warning “antifeminist ideologies are becoming increasingly prominent in Canada and internationally.”

The committee says boys and young men who are isolated or struggling to find their place in society are being presented with extreme content online that glorifies dominating and dehumanizing women and amplifies gender-based violence.

At a news conference on Parliament Hill, Conservative MP Dominique Vien, the committee’s chair, told reporters witnesses who spoke to the committee struggled to identify a single reason for the rise in antifeminism.

“Violence towards women, the cost of living, despair among families, that can fan those flames of antifeminism,” Vien said in French.

“There are studies that tell us there are some men who think women take up too much space.”

Liberal MP Marie-Gabrielle Ménard said the committee heard from witnesses that promoting antifeminism is also a lucrative endeavour.

“It’s a way for many to make money, to sell to a targeted audience who become vulnerable. And it’s profitable,” she said.

The MPs launched their study after a series of incidents, including a 2018 van attack in Toronto which saw a man deliberately drive down a busy sidewalk and kill 10 people, eight of them women. The convicted attacker had been inspired by “incels,” or self-described involuntary celibates.

The MPs also noted the artificial intelligence chatbot Grok was used to create millions of non-consensual, sexualized images of women in January.

The report says influencers are priming boys to suppress their emotions and value hypermasculinity, and to frame women’s gains as a loss for men.

The committee is calling on Ottawa to boost funding for programs “promoting healthy masculinities and men’s mental health, combating antifeminism, and providing early intervention … for individuals at risk of radicalization.”

It’s also calling for public information campaigns and more funding to research how antifeminist ideologies influence gender-based violence and coercive control.

The committee is calling for more programs that promote health, literacy and sport for young men and boys, and for initiatives to encourage women to engage in politics and for girls to pursue science.

MPs on the committee also want Ottawa to pass legislation to make online platforms safer for children and to criminalize nonconsensual images generated by AI.

The report calls on the government to “enhance its support for Canadian media, including local media, community media and diverse media sources,” and to boost digital literacy among youth.

Statistics Canada tracked a 19 per cent increase in police-reported intimate partner violence from 2014 to 2022. Over that period, Statistics Canada also tracked a 163 per cent spike in reports of intimate partner sexual assault and a 38 per cent increase in what the agency calls “indecent or harassing communications.”

MPs on the committee say governments and law enforcement should do a better job of sharing knowledge and best practices on tackling gender-based violence, but they stopped short of calls by some witnesses for a framework to track femicides, coercive control and intimate partner violence.

Conservative MP Anna Roberts said data on violence against women is “skewed” because many women are afraid to come forward.

“A lot of the times, because there isn’t a safe space for women, they end up going back. And so the cycle starts again. In order to get accurate data, we have to allow the women the protection that they deserve so that they can come forward,” she said.

“But not just arresting the individual. We have to make sure the individual goes through training to understand what they did is not right. It’s absolutely the only way to stop this. If we don’t educate them, then the cycle just continues.”

The Bloc Québécois issued its own report agreeing with the general themes of the main report but arguing many of the proposals infringe on Quebec’s jurisdiction.

The party is instead calling for “a substantial and permanent increase in federal health transfers, without conditions,” to prevent radicalization by focusing on mental health.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 16, 2026.